The crack investigative journalists at MTV asked Zack Snyder why he chose the Smashing Pumpkins’ The Beginning is the End is the Beginning (a slowed down version of The End is the Beginning is the End featured in that Schumacher Batman and Robin monstrosity) for the Watchmen trailer: “For one, I felt like in mood, (read…)

At what point does outrage over remakes become as boring as the remakes themselves? It seems fanboy scourge Paul W.S. Anderson wants to vomit all over the classic British gangster flick The Long Good Friday with a remake set in present day Miami. Says the director of Mortal Kombat and Alien vs. Predator: “I want (read…)

If you were online at all today, that strange substance that may have stained your clothing is nerd. That’s right. You got nerd on you. It turns out the Watchmen trailer which is set to premiere in front of Ye Olde Darke Knight was all over the Internets, first unofficially and then officially. It also (read…)

The international trailer for Ridley Scott’s Body of Lies is up on YouTube and you can also download higher resolution copies at the links below. Based on the 2007 novel by Washington Post columnist David Ignatius, Lies stars Leonardo DiCaprio as a CIA agent who goes undercover with a terrorist network in Jordan. Russell (read…)

A beta version of a new documentary streaming site called SnagFilms was launched today by Ted Leonisis, the former vice chairman of AOL. Backed by the former head of AOL Steve Case, SnagFilms also announced its purchase of IndieWIRE, the best site around for news and reviews of independent films. The idea to provide streaming (read…)

It was Spielberg’s idea, it doesn’t have a title and no one will say what it’s about, but Oscar winner Diablo Cody is writing it so it’s news. Meanwhile, hordes of bitter unproduced screenwriters all over Hollywood snap their MacBooks shut in disgust, seething at another’s success. Coming soon from Cody is the horror comedy (read…)

One of the pitfalls of the weekend forecast is that I miss limited releases all the time. Most often, something will be released in New York, but it won’t show up on the national radar and I won’t know about it until the Friday NY Times comes out or someone tells me about it. In (read…)

Patrick Goldstein reports on a conversation he had with Warner Bros. chief Alan Horn regarding Spike Jonze’s adaptation of Where The Wild Things Are. Originally scheduled for release in October, the film based on Maurice Sendak’s beloved childhood storybook met with disastrous test screenings in February. For one thing, it was found to be too dark (read…)

To the Internets, Robin! Fans who have been following the crazy viral marketing campaign for The Dark Knight were finally rewarded last night with free tickets to IMAX screenings of the film on Tuesday July 15. Pretty cool…unless you live in an unselect city.

I’ve put it off all morning because I can’t stand script reviews. Some guy talking about what he’s read in a script is so far removed from the movie experience that I’ve got no use for it. And that’s assuming the guy isn’t an idiot. Alas, I’ve carried the Inglorious Bastards joke this far, so I (read…)

This Anne Thompson posting is 24 hours old and, by Internet standards, that’s like last week, but those of you who weren’t taken by Kung Fu Panda might find it interesting. It’s taken from an unnamed writer’s forum and it’s a pretty entertaining rant about one writer’s experience working for DreamWorks’ Jeffrey Katzenberg on the (read…)

Ron Perlman in Hellboy II: The Golden Army It feels like the entire movie-going planet is focused on next week’s premiere of The Dark Knight. In the New York Times on Tuesday, Michael Cieply even reported that some theaters were adding a 6am show to the midnight and 3am screenings to meet demand for presale (read…)

Why, if I ever get my hands on that Thalberg…! As news spread last week that the original version of Fritz Lang’s epic silent sci-fi film Metropolis had been uncovered in Argentina, Christian Divine’s thoughts turned to scenes from other films he’d like to see recovered. At the top of Christian’s wish list are the numerous stop-motion (read…)

You may know Rajan Zed as the Hindu leader who sought to boycott Mike Myers’ The Love Guru for being offensive to Hindus. Or you might not. Either way, he apparently can’t let go of the movie even though it already embarrassed itself publicly at the box office. In his most recent email dispatch, Zed asks (read…)

At risk of emphasizing how badly I failed one of the better movies of the year while it was still playing in theaters (and still trying to make up for it), I’d like to call your attention to a characteristically excellent review of Shotgun Stories by Mr. Charles Bowen Jr. over at Bowen’s Cinematic. Better yet, (read…)

Ramin Bahrani’s Chop Shop. A movie you may have missed, now on DVD If it’s Tuesday, it must be DVD day. Here are a few DVDs of movies that may not have played in a theater near you. Chop Shop (****). Ramin Bahrani’s follow up to his critically popular Man Push Cart is a little (read…)

Is today a bad day to admit that I kind of hate Yankee Doodle Dandy? I kind of hate the song and I kind of hate the movie with James Cagney. That’s not to say Cagney wasn’t great in a musical. He was, but give me something like Footlight Parade any day. I don’t know. (read…)

Hancock was here Will Smith plays Hancock, a hard drinking, self-loathing, foul-mouthed creep who just happens to be endowed with invincibility, super strength and the ability to fly. He protects Los Angeles from the criminal element, but he tends to do more damage than good and the citizens find him more of a menace than (read…)

I was going to skip a middle of the year recap, but then Alexander Coleman got me to thinking about how well this year stacks up with last year in terms of quality. Mr. Coleman rightfully points out that 2008 is shaping up to be a solid in its own right. On the other hand, Variety’s Timothy (read…)

At DVD Panache, Adam Ross runs a weekly feature called Friday Screen Test where he takes someone who writes about movies, ties them to a chair, turns a hot light on them and grills them with movie related questions. I recently survived the experience and Adam has posted the results this morning. Head on over (read…)

I’m a sucker for lists. I really am. I can’t stay away from them, but I’m begging the AFI: please stop. Seriously. Sure, they probably make tons of money off of this kind of thing, but they’ve long gone past the point of overkill and they’re nearing the frontier of self-parody. Pretty soon they’ll be doing the Top (read…)

Be my Daikini baby Turns out he’s probably the only one, but MTV would like you to think that the diminutive actor’s eagerness means plans are in the works for a sequel to George Lucas and Ron Howard’s Willow. They’re hoping you’ll click on their headline and read their ads, but I’m going to spare (read…)

I just read about this in Variety this morning and haven’t had a chance to fully explore it yet, but New York’s Museum of the Moving Image launched the Moving Image Source today, a website edited by Dennis Lim “devoted to the history of film, television and digital media.” There is a database portion that (read…)

In case there was lingering hope that Brett Ratner’s proposed Beverly Hills Cop sequel would be anything but suck, you can forget about it. MTV asked the director what his biggest challenge would be and he replied: “10-year-old kids, 12-year-old kids don’t really know the old Beverly Hills Cop. So it’s an opportunity to make it (read…)

The Times of Harvey Milk This November, 16 years after producers Craig Zadan and Neil Maron (Chicago, Hairspray) began trying to get The Mayor of Castro Street made, the story of Harvey Milk is finally coming to the big screen. Unfortunately for Zadan and Maron, Milk, the Gus Van Sant directed film starring Sean Penn (read…)